hold, distort, falter
by loganes
Summary: The world is made up of gradations, and she lives within the gray. Effy/Tony


hold, distort, falter

* * *

i haven't slept in days  
the devil's just like cocaine  
gradually constant and permanently pain

* * *

"_Sometimes I think I was born backwards. You know, come out my mum the wrong way. I hear words go past me backwards. The people I should love, I hate. And the people I hate..."_

The colors that are Effy Stonem swirl and seem to blend and run together like the treacherous violent nature of her mind and soul until there is no color anymore, only gray, only dirty, only a mess to clean up later.

The world is made up of gradations but she can see through them all because she knows too much. She's always known too much, and there's no going back.

Escape takes its form in the fragile white powder like ice, her soil from the dead, and sometimes in the minute white pill that makes everything nothing and nothing and everything and it's okay, Effy, he sees you fall all the time, knows you can pick yourself back up and do it all again because that is the only way you know how to exist.

"_Too pretty for your own good. That's why you destroy everything you touch."_

She imagines the words come from Tony's mouth instead, because he _knows_. He's a Stonem, too, after all. Blood means everything.

Deft slim fingers brush through the dust of god and it scatters with her touch, attracted to the minute fissures of her skin and lightly gliding over the cool hard surface of the table. _A waste_, some might say. Effy just raises her fingers to her mouth, runs her tongue along her bottom lip and tastes. Kohl-lined eyes fall shut because of course, of course there are already copious amounts of the drug

_god's dust but some just call it cocaine I prefer the prior it rolls off the tongue nicely and maybe it's just a little less sinful_

inside her, always never too much never enough and the tiny flecks whisper to her even when she sleeps and dreams and walks and doesn't look back because she doesn't, won't, run.

"_Tony, Tony, why bother with love anyway?"_

As usual, he can't find an answer, so his agile tongue will flay words at her without meaning or care but he knows she understands.

_Blood means everything_. Or nothing.

Effy realises that everything and nothing are one and the same, _just like us Tony and _they both feel a little sedated lately because the inanities of life call for busyness. Falling has never felt so superior, so _sweet_ and a bit narcissistic

_just a bit Tony  
only a little Effy  
but Stonems are proud  
and always the best_

and breathing in, choking on god is religious, right?

This time's different and perhaps she does it on purpose, naturally she does it on purpose because she is Effy Stonem and there has to be a reason even when she's drowning and can't admit it, almost like that night

_so far away, a distant dream, an aleatory memory that can fade with the proper amount_

and the needle was deliciously painfully brief when it pierced her skin and there was soon a nothing of everything _one and the same_ and she hears the words go past her backwards again and again

"'_Course she wants some."_

and Tony? Somewhere there and near but her eyes wouldn't open, body wouldn't move and it was all static like knives in the knees and maybe it wasn't god, maybe it was the devil.

"_We'll call 911...soon as you fuck your sister."_

Do it.

In her mind she says it every time but her lips still aren't moving, none of her is moving and there is no control left and sadly it isn't the same as having all control and she just wants it to go away and come back and swallow all of her at once fully into the blackness behind the sky until control does not exist.

When Effy remembers that this is different, not that time, not the past

_even when the two blend together so effortlessly in thoughts that it all seems real and present and there is no such thing as time_

_even though she always goes back and relives because her mind is her best sanctuary_

she is not relieved.

_TonytonytonyTONY_ she wants to scream and this time there's no one around because he's been gone for a while and she tries to forget it all the time every hour minute second zero and this is her failure, right here. If he knows, if he understands, he would be here but he's not, he's too Tony and too Effy and there's too much of _them_ and none of him and her, no such thing as separate entities for the Stonem children.

Effy thinks maybe Tony can feel the control seep from him too the way it drains from her with each passing second _no such thing as time_ and yet she can feel that he's _not there_ and if there is no time then pastpresentfuture one and the same always the same and she's just stuck, suspended, out of time and out of Tony.

But fate knows Effy Stonem, and Effy Stonem knows fate, and there's a beautiful horrible tangible _feeling_ of hands shaking her shoulders and a muffled _Effy Effy oh god fuck someone help_

and this time she forces her eyes open and then her mouth and her lungs constrict around the air as she gasps; "_Tony_." It's like coming out of the water, and they know she's been underneath for too long, sinking into the murk and the weeds until she fades into sand, the earth, where they would never find her.

_Except you_. Except Tony.

She half expects to crash back down into the cool depths

_after a lift there is always a fall_

and in a way she does, but instead it's lips crashing against hers and there's still the lack of oxygen but at least she's not _below_, she's above the surface where there's control and hell is just a little further away. And in the salacious vertigo of her breathing mind, all she can think is

_long time coming._

_Tony_.

Gradations, and she lives within the gray.

* * *

A/N: What even is this. I don't know what this is. Implied incest. If you hadn't gotten that.

Disclaimer: Own nothing, used quotes from the show, still own nothing, blah blah.


End file.
